Gold Rush: zombie enemy

profchaos354 · Oct 2009

I am working on a student made game called Gold Rush. The story of the game is you play as an old gold miner who stumbled on an amazing abandoned mine that was filled with gold. While taking on the gold you find an old artifact which, since you disturbed it, unleashes a zombie outbreak. The whole premise is that you are trying to deposit all of your found gold into a bank while fighting through the zombie legions.

The character I'm currently starting work on is the basic zombie enemy. Here are the concepts:

Please feel free to critique as update my work progress.

MoP · Oct 2009

I like the style of the concepts, it should make for a pretty fun model!

AtlusZMH · Oct 2009

Welcome to Polycount Mark :P

Looking forward to seeing all this Gold Rush stuff

profchaos354 · Oct 2009

thanks for the replies guys!

Here's the first updates:

[Deleted User] · Oct 2009

Looking good so far. Is this the high poly or the low? It looks like there's a lot of detail in the teeth for it to be low, but not enough all around to be high. Or is this going to be subd'd and used as a base for sculpting?

profchaos354 · Oct 2009

this is the low poly. I would personally say that the only part of the teeth that I could cut down on is the middle line in between the front and back side of the teeth. Do you think that it would actually need cut down more then that?

throttlekitty · Oct 2009

It's a fun design! You rounded off some of the sharpness that the sketch had; I think that in the model it could add a lot more character. For the teeth, you can always switch to alpha'd planes.

Isaiah Sherman · Oct 2009

Hey, Mark! Nice to see you around Polycount

. Are you in the Production Team this term?

This is a great place to get a lot of professional feedback on your work, so have fun, get to know people, and always take everything with a grain of salt.

As for your project, the skull is looking pretty hysterical so far

. You have a lot of wasted edge loops in your torso, though. You could probably go for 3/4 of what you have right now.

Nice work so far

kickzombies · Oct 2009

Im liking the fun look to this.

Looking forward to more progress.

AtlusZMH · Oct 2009

Another thing you could try to do to cut down polys around the teeth is just block in the whole row instead of individual teeth. That way it would hold the silhouette and the texture work could define each tooth.

profchaos354 · Oct 2009

Hey Isaiah, yes this is for the Production team.

Thanks to everyone for their comments, I really appreciate that feedback

. I have knocked down the polycount of the teeth a little bit by removing the edge loop in between the front and back side but I'm wanting to keep them 3D and not just use planes to define the teeth. Soooooooooo, anyway, here's an update:

profchaos354 · Oct 2009

and another update. I'm now done with the base mesh. The model is 8503 tris.

Quokimbo · Oct 2009

Kind of reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediEvil

profchaos354 · Oct 2009

Lol, your right Quokimbo, he's basically a wild west version of that character ^_^ When I first started working on him, it actually was reminding me of Grim Fandango.

halcyon-88 · Oct 2009

Hey Mark, good to see ya workin on this! I saw Fleuters concept art for this and have been wondering who's modeling. Anywho, great work thus far.:thumbup:

profchaos354 · Oct 2009

Actually, this particular concept was done by Tyler, who is our lead texture artist ^_^. We had the early rough drawings of what the zombies may look like but they were fairly unfinished sketches and would have been hell to model from, so I asked Tyler to bust out a quick T-pose for me and that's the concept that he came up with. He actually took the character to the next level from where it was at, so that was pretty sweet

.

profchaos354 · Nov 2009

Here's a quick update. I'm done sculpting so here's the main parts of the model that got the most attention:

ralusek · Nov 2009

there's something wrong with your model. i think it's dead...i'm terribly sorry

woogity · Nov 2009

very cool like the style nice work so far man!

-Woog

Lonewolf · Nov 2009

pretty cool so far!

hey how did u do the stitches?

Espe · Nov 2009

its a basic brush in zbrush :P

3DLee · Nov 2009

Great style!

profchaos354 · Nov 2009

My god... you're right ralusek. It might be because I haven't been feeding him enough lately.

@ Lonewolf - I used a combination of the stitch brush that is in zbrush and the basic brush. I just changed brush sizes and the stroke type to get the desired effect.

Sylver · Nov 2009

slick stuff! I like the skull especially, I've been working on one and never realized how pain in the ass it can be. props to you.

profchaos354 · Nov 2009

Thanks Sylver, are you doing a realistic skull model or a stylized one? Luckily, i was able to skip a lot (most) of the difficult technicalities of a skull just because its supposed to look cartoony and not completely realistic ^_^ The big challenge of modeling this skull, unlike modeling a realistic skull, is making it so that it can probbably animate emotions.

Rhinokey · Nov 2009

have you considered trying larger over sized teeth, i dont know how well those lil things will read in game, looka liks a bit of noise on the smaller shots, and even on the big skull render the lower teeth are tiny, i'd go with about 4 or 5 teeth per jaw, an make them about as wide as his nose socket is at the bottom. other than htat i love the style of the skull

profchaos354 · Nov 2009

Well i found out something interesting today. Apparently Unreal has backface culling automatically turned off. To turn it on, you essentially are doubling the processing power it takes for a particular model. This is very bad for this type of character in particular since we are planning on having like 12 of them onscreen at once. This means I have to go back to square one and remodel a lot of the parts of this model so that it doesn't require backface culling to be turned on.

There is a combonation of things that make issues with this model if you can't see the baskside of faces. The main problem is that I overlapped the hands and feet of the UV layout since they weren't going to be unique. The problem with this is that with a normal map, it inverts the shading and lighting on the right hand unless I reverse the normals on said parts. Also, the polygons are all flat plains and will only be seeable from one side.

Does anyone have any work arounds for the textures so that I don't have to completely rework the character?

StephenVyas · Nov 2009

I've always been a fan of zombies, for as long as I can remember. Especially the rare zombies that have bones protruding through their skin. Aside from the bones protruding, I'm digging the last bit of fur on his skull as well. Kickass!

profchaos354 · Nov 2009

Here's another update. I'm almost done with texturing, I just have to do the spec map and the opacity map.

profchaos354 · Dec 2009

Here's an update. I have finally figured out how to get the model working in the unreal engine. Here's some pics of the engine and texture layers.

The only problem that I'm having now is getting my alpha to work. Anybody have any info on how to correctly use an opacity channel in unreal 3?

renderhjs · Dec 2009

it misses love for presentation and texture work- booth are bold and boring. Add some more interesting shading, texturing details and lightning setup to make this one shine better.

Lord_Mason · Dec 2009

Concept and model look great, however the texture feels very flat and boring. I had envisioned similar to borderlands, but thats just me. also get rid of the leather texture on the waist, just texture it bone there, would definitely look sick. Good work none the less.

//mason

profchaos354 · Dec 2009

Thanks for the critique, Renderhjs. I definantely agree with you about the painting. I think I'm going to go back and repaint a lot more detail into the diffuse map.

profchaos354 · Dec 2009

I did a little more work on the skull and figured I would get people's opinion with the direction im going with it.

iWeReZ · Dec 2009

Second one is much betterm But i dont get the wierd spikes on his head ?

profchaos354 · Dec 2009

@iWeReZ when the alpha channel actually gets applied, they are little hairs coming off the skull.

iWeReZ · Dec 2009

But hair is attached to the skin, Not the skeleton ?

profchaos354 · Dec 2009

refer to the concept, iWeReZ

@ Lord_Mason - I'm actually kind of confused as to what you are refering to. Leather texture on the waste? Are you talking to the belt? I'm not sure how you're envisioning bone protruding out of that particular space.

profchaos354 · Dec 2009

iWeReZ, do you think you'de actually prefer it without the "hairs"? I've actually been debating about the subject for awhile ^_^

Rang3r1 · Dec 2009

The second one looks much cleaner and defined, and the color adds much more to it. I like the hair in the concept, I would have to see the alphas on the model of course first, but I would say keep it, even little things like that add character, etc.

Gannon · Dec 2009

Random suggestion, take it as you will. Alpha map the bottom of his shirt and pop in some bones down there for the spine. This will help break up your silhouette and make it a little more dynamic.

symmetrical he yes. mmm.

Otherwise It's coming out pretty nicely, the textures could use a little love like the other said. great start w/ the skull on that front.

profchaos354 · Dec 2009

Quick update. I still have some minor details that I need to change on the diffuse map.

and my newer diffuse:

sub_roland · Dec 2009

Looking good, Prof, like where your going with the new texturing, and i do believe Lord_Mason was talking the abdomen, chuck below ribs and above belt, but maybe not, and that seems like it would be a bit of back tracking, and would go away from concept. but keep it coming liking it.

Lord_Mason · Dec 2009

sub_roland wrote: »

Looking good, Prof, like where your going with the new texturing, and i do believe Lord_Mason was talking the abdomen, chuck below ribs and above belt, but maybe not, and that seems like it would be a bit of back tracking, and would go away from concept. but keep it coming liking it.

yeah that is the area I was talking about. It just feels like the character is covered in leather shrink wrap, because of the jacket, I'd add some more rips and stuff, maybe a big patch or something sewn on, just feels a little dull down there. Don't get me wrong though, it looks great, but it can go further.

//mason

Mark Dygert · Dec 2009

Cool idea. I think you've made some great progress! Keep it up! It's really starting to develop!

I agree with mojokey about the teeth They kind of blur into a jagged edge of bone instead of teeth. I'm not sure sharp and pointy would really reinforce, old and zombie. They do a lot of chewing and nibbling on things.

I think about the rip in the denim you could add some white bits to help show that its frayed.
I also think you could desaturated the pants quite a bit, they look a little bright and cheery even for someone who would be alive. Cowboys where notorious for never bathing let alone washing or changing their cloths. I don't imagine that changes much after they die.

Gold Rush: zombie enemy

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